Where's Robin when you need him?

There are so many things to worry about in life that some of them slip under the radar . . .  until we are forced to confront them. So it was early Monday morning when I found a small, very dead, bat on the floor of our first-floor bathroom. I assumed one of our four cats, at least three of whom have very keen hunting skills, had done in the little guy (or gal), which had a small red spot on its skin where the death blow may well have been delivered.

Maybe it was the early hour or my addled priorities, but I didn’t give much thought to the incident after I scooped up the bat in a dust pan and tossed it outside. By the time my wife Liz took one of our cats to the vet on Tuesday, on an unrelated matter, the bat was the farthest thing from my mind. Then the phone rang. It was Liz.

“Where did you toss that bat?” she asked, a note of concern in her voice.

“Out front, in the big flower bed.”

“Well, the vet says you should bring it into the state health lab to be tested for rabies, if you can find it. And you should bring it in today.”

Rabies! The four cats and both of our dogs are vaccinated against the dreaded disease, but the mere word set off alarm bells. If the bat was rabid, the vet was recommending booster shots.

I called the Maine Center for Disease Control, which interviewed me at length about whether the bat had come into direct contact with any people in the house (no) or with any animals (probably). The epidemiologist politely suggested that I should have refrigerated the bat, instead of tossing it in the yard. ("What's that next to the butter dish, dear?" "Oh, that's just a dead bat.")

Picking up the bat with a shovel and depositing it into a plastic bag, I drove to the health lab at about 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday. There I filled out a form and was admitted into a locked room containing a refrigerator, where I deposited the tagged bag. The bat would be tested for rabies on Wednesday ( if it wasn’t too badly decomposed after its stay in the garden) and the state would call us with the results late Wednesday afternoon.

The rational side of me said there was nothing to worry about. Research shows that most bats are not rabid. Plus, I never touched the bat. Moreover, Liz and the dogs had no contact with the bat. And our animals are all vaccinated. Still, reason only goes so far in situations like this. The tension mounted as we awaited the state's call. When the phone rang at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Liz raced to grab the receiver.

I could tell from her end of the conversation that the bat had been sufficiently well-preserved to be tested. And that the result was negative.

“We’re not going to die?” I said melodramatically when she hung up.

“We’re not going to die,” she replied.

Now I can get back to worrying about the important stuff, like the risk of a meteor crashing into the back yard and creating a sink hole that disturbs a massive hornets’ nest, sending hordes of stinging insects racing into the bathroom while I’m taking a shower.